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In the USDOE Educational Technology plan, Universal Design for Learning standards require that information be presented in a way that is accessible to people with disabilities such as sight or hearing impairment. I found this article about automatic text-to-sign avatar software that would seem to be a no-brainer for anybody who is creating an eLearning experience that is primarily text-based. We have text-to-speech, which is as easy as opening a document and having a robot read the text for you. I wonder if there are any text-to-sign avatars that are available in English.

Microsoft patent application proposes generating fat avatars for people whose health records indicate that they are overweight

Although often seen as an inconsequential feature of digital technologies, one's self-representation, or avatar, in a virtual environment can affect the user's thoughts, according to research by a University of Texas at Austin communication professor.

The school I am interning at (The Carroll School) is using this in their middle school math classes. Small class sizes typically (4-8 kids /  class), and it's a 1:1 school where every child has a laptop. But - it's working well for designated independent work time in the math classes I've observed- where each kid is asked to play the game for 15 minutes on their own. Kids have their own profiles- and there are several different math mini games they can play, each game focusing on different math skills. Each mini game involves different game mechanics and art styles. But all games involve using arithmetic skills and math concepts to solve problems that progress them in the game. Good performance gives the kids in-game credits/money that they can use to customize their in-gam avatar. 

What happens to your teen avatar when the plug is pulled on your virtual world?

That looks like a tragedy that's rooted in bad software architecture - having the Teen software be so different from the main Second Life software that it now has to be shut down ... tsk tsk. I hope Linden Labs has learned from this. It was really interesting to learn how this has been used in education (with specifics about hurdles the teachers had to jump to get it into the curriculum).

The latest AR toys from Mattel... Apparently the toy industry is trying to capitalize on the tech already.

Professors in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science are creating a multimedia system that uses multiple 3-D cameras to create avatars of humans in two different places, and then puts them in the same virtual space where they can interact.

European scientists have integrated robotics, video, and various sensor and display technologies to transport someone into a geographically distant meeting room under the auspices of the Beaming through augmented media for natural networked gatherings (Beaming) project. The European Union-funded effort utilizes immersive virtual reality technologies in which a robotic avatar functions as the meeting participant's eyes, ears, and mouth. The participant wears a head-mounted display and is connected to sensors, enabling them to receive the avatar's video and audio feeds in three dimensions. The two-way connection also enables the participant's movements and responses to be mimicked by the robot.

Really interesting study about how technology can help treat social anxiety disorders.

Meez, a start-up that expanded last year from an avatar creation service into a full-out virtual world for teens, is touting some good news: it's been profitable since April and "every month is better than the last month," CEO John Cahill told CNET News.

Here is a website with a virtual world game for kids. You travel around a world called miamiopia in the form of a balloon avatar. You come across questions from content domains and I think then you answer questions and earn coins. If you can't answer the questions, as happened to me when trying to earn coins by answering questions identifying dinosaurs, you are taken to a web site with the information so you can learn it.

Here's a report from FutureLab at the National Foundation for Educational Research. It's a long report but they touch on a number of ways that neuroscience and technology can be integrated, whether it being using fMRI to demonstrate how brain activity levels are heightened when someone is allowed to choose their own avatar in a video game, or creating an app that helps dyslexic children read based on a neuroscience framework.

This is an opinion article that talks about immersion and the first-person camera angle in video games. He argues that game developers should re-evaluate the assumption that the first-person viewpoint is inherently more immersive than other gaming experiences.

AR experiment by Georgia Inst. of Tech. superimposing Second Life Characters in a real life office environment.

AR experiment by Georgia Inst. of Tech. superimposing Second Life characters in a real life office environment.